


i thought i set a fire in your eyes (but it was just a reflection of the one you've burnt into mine)

by elkeihs



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Multi, hunger games victors au, mentions of prostitution! don't read if not comfortable!, sicheng is the newly crowned victor, the capitol is super screwed up & corrupt & morally skewed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-23 09:31:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16156334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elkeihs/pseuds/elkeihs
Summary: sicheng is the newest victor - and stumbling through the city, he's both in and out of love with a man with plastic retinas and pastel hair, and eventually he makes himself a home amidst the chaos.





	1. eyes up, starshine

**Author's Note:**

> for the most part, this story is actually kind of more winwin harem, but leans most heavily on sicheng falling hardest for taeyong.
> 
> for clarification;  
> sicheng is the latest victor from the hunger games  
> taeyong is an eNigma have fun figuring him out!!! but note that he has pink hair in this because that was a whole Look  
> jaehyun, yukhei/lucas are older victors (don't @ me about yukhei's timeline let's just say he got picked really young)  
> yuta is a capitol stylist  
> minhyung/mark is a capitol citizen  
> (taeil comes in in part 2, and i'm sorry i didn't include the whole nct unit but its just so much to cover already)

(too bright, he thinks, he blinks, and loses his grip on himself in the waves of colours and sounds. too bright, he thinks.)

When he opens his eyes against the blurring crowds, the first thing he is aware of is his skin, prickling under the intense gazes of other partygoers. Blue eyes, gold eyes, red eyes. So many, plastered on his every move, on the curl of his fingers and the nape of his neck. The walls feel tenuous, flimsy. He feels all too much like a test subject, laid out on cold metal as bare as his bloodied scars when he first stumbled out. Little fingers poking and prodding, like a curious child's hands disfiguring warm butter, almost.

He pushes at the surface of his arms, little crescents forming pretty and pink with each press. It is milky smooth under his clawing fingers and a little plasticky in the way it shines under the fluorescent lights. He shivers, and it is golden and fake, his body just another part of him stolen by them.

When he was dragged out, and had Panem screaming his name, he thrashed and kicked and his skin was peeling everywhere. Red sticky and slick at the same time, he was coated in a substance partially his and partially not. Not that it really mattered, because his skin was also falling apart, exposing bits of him the eye was never meant to see. Muscle chords and veins looked so similar to peonies that he found himself smiling giddily on the hovercraft.

But his skin is now not his skin. They buffed him up and fixed the scars adorning his arms, erased the bruises blooming on his right cheek, stitched up the gaping wounds patterning his back.

("two parallel vertical lines", the people in white whispered, "remarkably deep", they giggled.)

He looks whole again, as if he ever was, and he shouldn't be looking like this, not when he's a killer and a monster and a Victor.

Yuta told him that this kind of thing was normal amongst the Victors, because they have an image to uphold and had to look good and had to do lots of other things that Sicheng forgets now. Honestly, things got a bit hazy amidst the vomiting and the crying and Yuta patting his back with faltering professionalism. Victors have to be perfect, Yuta did not say, but they both know it by the gleam of the public eye.

Yuta hummed as he led Sicheng to the sleek machinery that made him pretty, offhand lilts and reassuring in the way the closed off melodies wavered into the cracks of innovation.

(sicheng wishes yuta was here at this too bright too loud party. not because he is particularly close to yuta, not yet, but because there's something comforting about the familiar. because yuta would laugh and crack a joke and everything would seem okay again. familiarity may breed contempt, but they are still strangers, and sicheng basks in the semblance of something stable.

look sharp, soldier! i’m always with you. yuta would clap his hands together and burst into a beautiful, beaming, blinding smile two notches too bright, envelop him in a hug that made sicheng feel warm again.)

But that is besides the point. The acute observation is that Yuta isn't here. Instead there's a ghastly green concoction someone pressed into his hand with a knowing smile and wink and a fleetingly hot hand down his arm. There’s a rising flush and a sick lurch of his stomach as Sicheng watches pink glitter float delicately on the green mush, watches purple hair bounce away in tandem with swaying hips, like clockwork,and feels sweat bead its way onto his hands so fast that he drops the champagne glass like burnt. The glass slips from his hands sleekly, falling almost in slow motion, and he wants to stretch out his fingers to curl around it for a semblance of stability, and there’s a crash that sounds like a shattering gunshot and -

Quiet.  
Maybe that's what he notices next. He blinks as startled eyes turn his way, and he's caught like a deer in hunting season. Lips curl contemptuously, and the whispers begin, little snippets winding their way to Sicheng and settling in his guilty hands. Suddenly, reality bends around him, grasping at the seams of his mind, and he's unsure of whether the whispers are a projection of his thoughts, his mind roaring at him, or the crowd's genuine gossip.

(isn't that the new victor? god what a klutz! what's his name again? how did he even win?  
honestly this party's in his honor right? how uncouth! isn't that the new victor? victor? victor?

victor?)

Sicheng feels invisible hands climbing their way up his throat, clutching at his windpipe heavily, desperately, and he can't think, he can't breathe he can't he can't he can't it's too many "can't"s and it's too much for him and then -

"Hey."

Eyes like honey swarm into Sicheng's rapidly blurring field of vision, and a gentle curl of a hand leads him away. Step after step, Sicheng follows almost in a trance, stumbling and blind.

"Hey," the voice says again, so quiet and so beautiful that it ebbs like a song into the night. The vague workings of a melody dance into his memory, a lifting song that makes him think of a little golden boat drifting in a midnight sea. Into the deep dark waters there is a shining boat and Sicheng pulls himself along the ripples of music. He shuffles forward on his own accord, his feet waltzing him into following the warm palm of a helping hand.

It is quiet again, but the good kind, and Sicheng blinks into clarity. His vision clears, hazily sharpening, and he blinks again. A stranger sits in front of him, face illuminated by faltering moonlight, eyes sparkling in concern.

"Are you quite alright?"

Flickering rays of moonbeam dance across the stranger, and Sicheng feels the beginnings of something strange imploding within him. The stranger’s delicately sharp features are thrust into silver, expressive, intense dark eyes across a steep slope of a nose, soft pink hair swept in elegant discord, and he feels a flutter of wings flash across his chest, but it is not discomforting, and Sicheng breathes shakily.

"Are you okay? You looked to be in rather bad shape just now, so I thought maybe fresh air would help. Are you feeling alright?"

Sicheng runs his tongue along his teeth, heavy with disuse, and coughs up an affirmation.

"Yeah. Yeah." He clears his throat, extremely aware of his predicament and the persistent fluttering in his chest, a feeling not unlike flowers blooming in his lungs. He feels like choking under the spotlight of this beauty, and the roots ingrain themselves deeper into his alveoli.

"That's good to hear."

The stranger turns his face to the pulsating house, music providing a steady bass that thumps into the night. The stranger frowns, and then almost as if remembering the presence of another person, smiles with quick succession.

"I'm Taeyong, by the way."

Sicheng offers his name in response, and Taeyong laughs, a high pitched giggle bordering on awkward and squeaky, his face turning pink under the stars. Sicheng files the endearing laugh away in his memory, slightly grateful that a beatific person has discrepancies too.

"I'm sorry - Its just. Everyone knows that. No need for introductions, Winwin, not when all of the Capitol knows your name. This party's even in your honour."

Sicheng bristles for the slightest moment, and Taeyong’s eyes dawn with flickers of a faint understanding.

"I'm Sicheng. The Capitol named me Winwin.” There is a pregnant pause filled with a twinkling sympathy in Taeyong’s eyes. “I'm Sicheng," and he says it again, almost reassuring himself with quiet disposition before he gets caught up in the simplicity of the past and a lost life.

"Well, pleased to make your acquaintance, Sicheng."

Taeyong smiles again, lapsing into soft giggles once more, before brushing his pants off gracefully, and extending an invitation to stand up in the form of an welcoming hand.

"We should get back soon. They will want to see you. You shouldn't be away too long."

Taeyong's eyes take on a sudden glint as he observes the extravagant house, eyebrows creasing down minutely and the lines of his face harden temporarily, before he turns back, eyes crinkling with warmth.

Sicheng glances up at Taeyong, whose golden crown of head is basked in moonlight and thinks vaguely, that Taeyong looks like an angel.

(only that those things don't exist, and the moon was so artificially glaring that sicheng's eyes were squeezed up against the light. taeyong is so beautiful, so perfect and so pretty, that sicheng finds himself inundated by waves of something unknown. and. well, even if taeyong isn't an angel, sicheng still looks at the offered hand, blushing, and voices his decision to stay in the garden.

taeyong, realizing that sicheng simply wasn't going anywhere, sat down near some articulately trimmed bushes adorned with flowers, stared at horticulture for much of the night. taeyong doesn't ask questions, doesn't prod curious fingers into the translucent mush of sicheng.

when taeyong stood up and left with a clumsy bow, the air was endless and cool, and Sicheng felt something pleasant settle in his gut.)

A man stumbles out much later, as the party dies down considerably and adrenaline high couples ducked under the concealment of the gardens. His eyes, maybe less hazy and diluted than the others, search the grounds before landing on Sicheng. The man breaks into a smile, and Sicheng resists the childish urge to press keen fingers into the imprints of dimples. The man walks forward, with a little trip in his step, before settling down next to Sicheng, folding long legs with surprising grace.

"Jung Yoonoh."

Sicheng looks at him from under his bangs, and sees a vaguely familiar face now sporting ashy blonde. Yoonoh smiles, all teeth and squinting eyes, and wipes a bead of sweat off his brow.

"Yuta told me to take care of you. Sorry I didn't see you before, got a little lost on the way here."

Yoonoh chuckles, a low crackle in the back of his throat down to his stomach, and it is both unlike Taeyong and every bit like it. Yoonoh coughs, suddenly shy.

"Yuta said you were really inexperienced in social situations like this. You'll get used to it, of course, but it's hard at first. But you’ll get used to it."

There is a pause. It stretches, although not uncomfortable, before Sicheng takes the opportunity to fill the emptiness.

"Yuta's nice."

Yoonoh heaves a great sigh, clasping at his bright hair, before chuckling softly and leaning back into the greenness of the lawn. Sicheng peers at him, at once baffled and comforted by the man's bumbling attempts at friendliness. Yoonoh’s eyes catch his, curving into crescents.

"Yeah, yeah he is. Uh. Sorry. I'm not very good at this."

Sicheng mumbles out that it's fine, he's not too great either, and Yoonoh's dimples appear again. He lies next to Yoonoh, at first hesitantly, and the neatly trimmed grass tickles his neck. They talk into the morning, and the image of Taeyong hovers on the edges of his horizons, the rising sun but a pale imitation of watercolour in the pink flickers of Taeyong's hair.

-

(this is stupid. he’s being stupid. what on earth is he thinking? how can he expect so much?)

His hand hovers at the edge of a mahogany door, and for a moment Sicheng is stunned into silence, his knuckles hesitant as he gathers his rucksack in a hand and runs over the words in his mouth. It’s dark out, his pale hand stark and bright under the moonlight. Even though there's an unsaid alliance formed, a resonating hole between them that they have yet to breach, Sicheng still feels uncomfortable in the knowledge that he’s toeing a line, stepping into intrusiveness, almost.

(what if the invitation was just a passing pleasantry? what if he didn’t really mean it and now sicheng is standing here looking so dumb and so stupid and - )

Abruptly, the door swings open, startling him and Yoonoh is leaning against the frame, slouched in dark checkered sweatpants and a towel draped over his shoulders with practiced indifference, a friendly smirk lining his lips.

“Planning to stay there all night?” Sicheng smiles, soft, and Yoonoh opens his house to him with a dimpled smile and warm arms, eyebags shadowing the contours of his face as he makes him hot chocolate, and sits with Sicheng as they watch state propaganda romantic comedies with fizzling dialogue and terrible acting. When Sicheng begins yawning, Yoonoh directs him to a furnished warm guest room, fatigue noticeable in his drooping eyes, though he doesn’t say a word of complaint. The guest room is polite courtesy, of course - they both know it's impossible to sleep alone in the first few months.

The nightmares come, as they do, and as Sicheng wakes in a steady stream of cold sweat and screams that ripple in his pristine bedsheets, Yoonoh is already bursting into the room, blinking sleep from his eyes as his face collapsed into sympathetic understanding. At first, Sicheng is drowned in the images of broken ribes breaking skin, rolling eyes and a fiery inferno, but then Yoonoh’s cool fingers tread into his shaking arms, and his head clears because there is a singing now that sounds like a dip into a crystalline lake deep in the woods. Calm and cool, as Sicheng sinks so far into the watery depths of Yoonoh’s voice until he’s looking up at an night sky’s moon through ripples caused by the disturbances of pine leaves.

It eventually becomes a routine, Yoonoh would sigh, and hold him closer as Sicheng nestles up in the middle of the night, tucks his head into the crook of Yoonoh’s arms as the rumbles of chest, the staccato heartbeat lull him into a semblance of safety. It’s hard to find nowadays.

-

He sees Yuta again at the next event, Yoonoh’s been busy socialising with older Victors he knew so Sicheng stands awkwardly at the edges of a room he’s not comfortable in as his eyes flicker around searching for exits. And in all honesty he's still not sure when him and Yuta crossed the line of professionalism to friendship, but they have. It's an altogether interesting sensation, having someone to fool around with in a world so uptight. Sometimes though, he can never dig up the seed of uneasiness that courses within him whenever Yuta turns to him with a blinding smile too joyful to be true.

If he bonded with Yoonoh over shared heart to heart troubles and a mutual acute understanding of each other, he bonds with Yuta over shared laughter and far fetched ideas that never see the light of day. It's an interesting sensation.

Eventually the three of them sit in the balcony, upstairs, quickly favoured of an area, tilting their heads skyward as Yoonoh prattles on about things too complex for Sicheng to wrap his mind around. In the midst of the quiet, he catches drifts of electromagnetism and vortexes and the literary works of Old Panem. Yuta props a head up, eyes slanting into kindness.

"Do you want anything? I'm thinking of grabbing strawberry tarts. I know it's Win's favourite. What about you, Jung?"

Sicheng frowns.

And then it comes out raw and vulnerable and bare. An ugly little confusion that scrapes its way into the back of his mind, and then off the tip of his tongue before he can stop it.

"Why are you so nice to me?"

Yoonoh's gone quiet, swiveling his head owlishly with eyebrows raised as the tension breads thicker and thicker. Yuta blinks a few times, the heaviness of thought surfacing on the canvas of his face, eyes pulling into a more somber expression, eyebrows more taut and cheeks stilled. Sicheng wants to balk at the impassive expression painted on Yuta's face, so unused to seeing an unsmiling Yuta.

"I suppose - well I guess it's something having to do with wanting to give a bit more happiness to this world. Things aren't - the world isn't the best place. Some people deserve far more than they have, and some don't. I just want to bring a little good to some things."

A little pink tongue darts out and wets nervous lips.

"I hope - I hope you don't think I'm being nice because I pity you. I do the things I do because I think you're a good person. Things like that aren't so easy to find in the Capitol, you know? I'm lucky. Lucky that I've found good people amidst all this."

Yuta's face crinkles up again as Sicheng offers a tentative smile, and the spreading silence settles over them like a down blanket, soft and impressionable. Yuta turns his head to the artificial sky, and catches falling moonlight in open hands, palms to the heavens and eyes sprinkled with stars.

-

When an envelope with a fancy gold seal and the lingering smell of roses arrives on his doorstep, Yoonoh looks at him with pity and holds him under his arm. Yuta arrives at Yoonoh’s doorstep a few hours later, clutching a similar letter in his hand, knuckles white with tension, jaw shaking slightly as he tries to smile. Sicheng spends that night crying and curling in on himself further and further, because he thought that plunging a knife into a boy over and over was enough to live his life in peace.

He was wrong, clearly, and arrives at a lime green mansion with puffy eyes and shaking hands. He wears white, virginal and pure, because that was what the letter said, along with 'you should be very happy and fortunate.'

(yuta didn't smile as he threaded his fingers through sicheng's hair, as gripped his comb too harshly. instead, yuta hugged him, and choked a remark that he looked good and this was so stupid, and sicheng felt like crying all over again.)

A middle aged man with glaring red hair that doesn't do much to hide a receding hairline undresses him with stubby fingers, swirling a rough tongue on every inch of skin exposed. Sicheng squeezes his eyes shut, shuddering under the roaming hands, grubby fingers pressing hard enough to bruise his new body, bloom purple across his hips.

The client thrusts in and out of him in heavy, musky pants slick with sweat and other substances, and it hurts more than anything he ever felt in the arena. After everything, the man presses hot kisses all over him, and rolls over to clean up. 

Sicheng stares at the ceiling, and recites all the types of trees to pass the time.

When he staggers home, little streaks of red hidden under his pristine white pants that have turned the slightest shade of pink down there, Yoonoh is waiting at the table with a cup of hot chocolate and a shaky smile. Hey, Yoonoh whispers, and Yuta scurries forward to touch his face, his fingers hesitant. Sicheng nods, once, and careful fingers cup his cheeks as Yuta chokes. He flinches at the contact, and doesn't miss the way Yoonoh shivered at the imprints of a hand stamped on his body.

"I'm fine," he replies, watching Yoonoh's doubt and Yuta's concern, and tries telling himself the same as he scrubs himself in the hottest shower possible and lets his tears mix into the water raining down. Sicheng cleans himself with a pastel pink loofah for two hours until his fingers are beyond shriveled, before Yoonoh hooks his arms under Sicheng's wet ones, and pulls the sitting boy out of the cubicle. Yoonoh sobs quietly, gathering him in his arms, before he straightens and pulls himself together with a solemned maturity only he possesses.

Yoonoh helps him change into a fresh set of pajamas, and awkwardly avoids the purple bruises handprinted onto his body with a sensitivity and grace Sicheng's experienced many a time before. This time, however, instead of holding him close, Yoonoh blinks, finds the words in his throat and coughs roughly.

"It's okay to talk to me, you know. I know how it feels. It's just. I just. Being a victor, never really what it is, isn't it?"

Yoonoh doesn’t apologise, doesn’t try to sympathise, resigns himself to a quiet comfort unique to broken people, and asks questions that do not require an answer, and babbles into the night about astronomy and galaxies and planets and stars until Sicheng falls asleep. Yoonoh presses soft kisses to his towelled hair, holding him in shaking arms, humming softly as the vibrations lull them into a tentative peace. Not for the first time, Sicheng is exceedingly happy about finding such a friend in the boy, and wishes a little that he could love him, love him more, wishing he could feel less like a monster.

(love is a foreign concept, because he doesn't deserve it, doesn't deserve such a beautiful aspect of life when his is already so ugly.)

-

 

It becomes routine. Some clients want him to choke them, to wrap his fingers around their neck, around their eyes, and to squeeze until they’re pulsating in the waves of pleasure. It’s a gimmick, and he rides on the bloodied coattails of his success from the arena, hides the disbelief in his eyes at the people who pay to see children kill and hurt, and pay to experience it for themselves.

Maybe there’s something about this common language, a brother land that draws him towards this golden boy. A shared understanding that is virtually inexplicable, but expressible between broken Victors. Yukhei catches his eye with a languid smile and a flop of artfully disheveled brown hair, a playful wink speaking of much more, before the man disappears amidst the throngs of people - but Sicheng's heart has quicken its paced, and he licks his lips in anticipation. Later, as the after party wraps itself up in confetti and stumbling couples, champagne bottles popping and glitter flying, Sicheng and Yukhei fall into bed together. But it's so fast and so confusing, that Sicheng has no time to think, no time to wonder if any of this is a good idea. As Yukhei presses hot kisses to Sicheng's jawline, and his hands wander down his rib cage, he thinks - maybe it's for the better; because without the time to think, Sicheng won't have second thoughts on falling in love with a man so similar to himself, so monstrous.

At first Yukhei kisses him with open mouthed tenderness, and Sicheng feels his brows involuntarily contract, and he retreats into a system that he knows, so he bites back, pushes into Yukhei with a force he knows the boy can take. Yukhei groans, low and guttural, exposing the golden arc of his neck as sweat glistens steadily, effectively wrenching Sicheng back to a reality he’s more familiar with. Yukhei’s hands are rough, calloused and scrabbling at his unmarked skin, teeth grazing blooming pinks across his whole body - and the fire burning deep in his gut makes Sicheng want to fight back, to scream and to kick and to mark Yukhei. And so Sicheng draws up his nails, presses his lips to Yukhei’s hard enough to bruise, sharp enough to draw blood.

Waves crashing against the sand, they ebb into each other, in a mess of tangled limbs and the rawness of a monstrosity only known by them. After Yukhei collapses on him, his sweat glistening across his greek-like body, and they steady their panting, Yukhei once again showers him in careful, closed mouth kisses. It’s painfully loving, the aftermath is so sickeningly sweet, that Sicheng pushes him off with a contained grunt, sliding his worn body out with practiced ease.

Yukhei makes a vague noise of dissent, and he turns around to look at the frown in Yukhei’s brow, the confusion etched into his blown out eyes, before he scoffs loudly, and throws a discarded shirt on. There’s a unsaid naivety in affection, a stupid glimmer of hope in Yukhei’s eyes that makes Sicheng want to shrivel up into the recesses of a cyncial comfort he’s crafted for himself. And so Yukhei sits alone, and dwarfed for once in the swirling mass of duvet, and Sicheng’s out the door faster than either of them can say goodbye.

It’s a bit cruel, but Sicheng is past the point of caring anymore. It’s better this way.

(they meet at almost every event, and sicheng doesn’t turn away when yukhei rams into him in the dark angles of a closet, yukhei kisses him hard and never tries to be soft again - and sicheng revels in this pain. but sicheng always leaves first, leaves yukhei lingering in the darkness with an unspoken emotion that will forever remain in the secrecy of a closet.

sicheng will never mention this, but as yukhei thrusts into him, the image of a pink haired stranger, almost, is seared into his mind, the name taeyong teetering on the edge of his tongue when he cries out. maybe he what he feels is guilt, for dangling yukhei on a tenuous string that he’ll cut without hesitation, at any moment for someone else.)

-

Lee Minhyung stares at him with bright eyes, pitch black hair slicked behind his ears as his mother clamps a manicured hand over a rippled shoulder. All teeth and stark red lipstick that Sicheng can see, soprano smiles as she ushers the two of them into an ostentatious tour display of wealth across their lands.

“Minhyung is so excited to meet you, Winwin! We loved watching your games.” 

“Thank you.”

“That axe? Splendid aim - so precise! And that rockslide - Oh! Simply genius, really. Minhyung dearest wouldn’t last a minute in that arena!”

The boy in question blushes, a bloom of red rising across his cheeks, colouring the fading ounces of childhood fat, as Minhyung swats at his mother’s wandering hands. Red lipstick stretches into yet another smile, and her unblemished skin pulls tight across her face, unmoving. Minhyung steals shy glances, half enamoured and half disgusted, his hands tight on the crease of his jacket, and Sicheng thinks that they are all too young for this.

Red lipsticks bustles on, manicured hands gripping the silk of his shirt, and Sicheng fights the wave of nausea that crawls up his throat, failing to notice the sharp, calculative looks Minhyung throws his way in the absence of his mother’s watchful gaze.

It is thus in the quiet of a cream and golden bedroom, heavily scented with artificial lavender, however, that Minhyung opens his mouth, and his face collapses from an indistinguishable mask. It’s almost imperceptible a change, but Sicheng’s been reading people ever since he’d stepped a shaking foot into the Capitol. Minhyung’s eyes take on a sharper quality, refining themselves, his shoulders seem to broaden infinitesimally, and he carries himself with an authority Sicheng failed to spy in a shy, brooding boy with a blush.

Minhyung settles on the opposite end of the plush king bed, sitting cross-legged and staring deep into Sicheng, eyes unblinking. Sicheng watches his lips purse, cheeks full and teeth imperfect and for a moment, he thinks that this young boy who wraps himself in his mind against the currents is more beautiful than anything he’s experienced in the Capitol. Minhyung’s eyes seem satisfied, and he smiles slightly.

“I know what my mother expects to happen.” The voice is deeper than expected, lilting casually at the edges, and Minhyung’s eyes sparkle as he takes in the flicker of expressions shadowing Sicheng’s face.

“And I don’t want any of that.”

Sicheng feels the stirrings of emotion in the unfamiliarity of today’s job, and his brain rewires to internalise the fact that he might have just met one of the abysmally few normal people of the Capitol. The aftershocks of confusion must have painted itself across his face, because Minhyung breaks into a hearty and yet squeaky laugh that indicates the pain of his youngness.

“How much did she pay for you? I imagine most Victors come at high prices, right? She said you were a coming of age birthday gift,” and he scoffs loudly, a languid roll of eyes and Sicheng relaxes into the duvet. “Mother - well, the people here, honestly, are just really stupid sometimes.”

A soft laugh bubbles in Sicheng’s throat, and it feels good in it's simple joy.

“We don’t actually get paid.”

There’s something magnetic about Mark’s disillusioned innocence, and something beautiful in the delicate arches of his face, and something so honest and so open in his person, that makes a small voice in the back of Sicheng’s mind decide to trust him.

“The president, he assigns us the clients. We usually have no choice, unless they have nothing to hold over us.”

There is a comfortable pause as Minhyung scratches his neck, eyebrows furrowed softly as he mulls over the information.

“Huh. Wow, I guess I always thought you guys were paid - or -"

“Clients usually only pay us as a form of appreciation, an extension of gratitude for their deeds” and Sicheng thinks of the jewellery - tucked into a loaded box in the back of his closet, the money - shoved into anonymous mattresses littered across the city, the secrets - filed into his memories for no one to peruse but himself, the endless bouquets of flowers wilting and dying in fading vases, drenching his house in the stench of decay and mistakes. 

“We’re the Capitol’s playthings,” and he shoots Minhyung a withering handsome smile that speaks of experiences he’s too familiar with, bitterly saccharine sarcasm dripping from his teeth.

Minhyung stretches out a warm palm, and pats his shoulder with soft comfort, accompanied by a bunny-like smile that dispenses a sense of inner loveliness.

Sicheng is expected to stay the night, and Minhyung ends up pulling his books from the shelves, and tracing nail-bitten fingers across magnificently decorated books filled with art pieces, listening intently to Sicheng’s soft murmurings. They dance across the pages of art history, curling with their toes under Arabian blankets as they sketch stark black illustrations across expensive paper, quiet laughter wafting through the air as conversations stretch across the night.

Sicheng feels a particularly keen sense of regret and sadness when morning comes, and he waves goodbye to a once again hunched and shy boy, held rigidly with gripping fingers by the mother, but Sicheng thinks vaguely in happiness that at the very least he scrawled his contact information onto a corner of a Mathematics textbook - that at the very least he’s found a friend, and that Minhyung will find some joy in the middle of working through Statistics.

He smiles into his coat, and it is one of the better days after the Games.

-

He meets Taeyong again at another event, and his eyes lit up, his breath catches in his throat when he sees the familiar pastel pink hair and divinity blessed cheekbones. He probably chokes when Taeyong turns around, eyebrows furrowing slightly before his vision lands on him, Sicheng blushing crimson, and the elder walks over with effortless elegance.

“Hey.”

“Didn’t think I’d see you again.” and Taeyong’s response is a laugh that Sicheng remembers so vividly in the back of his mind, or the forefront.

“Some one’s more comfortable. Big leap from that shy Victor, I’d say.” Taeyong’s fingers brush lightly at his arm, and Sicheng feels the stirrings of heat rising in his chest, feels prickles where the fingertips touched him. He shoots his most charming smile - the kind Yuta says could disarm a man and Yoonoh cuffs his shoulders about, and Taeyong stares straight at him, before shooting back a smirk of his own.

“I think a year in this hellhole teaches a person a thing or two about confidence.” Adrenaline is pumping through him, and Sicheng feels bolder than ever - there’s just something exciting waiting over the horizon.

“Spunky,” Taeyong’s eyes twinkle, “say, you wanna get out of here? I know a good Shawarma down the street.” It’s posed as casually nonchalant as an invitation can get, but Sicheng’s so accustomed to the nuances of conversation by now that he knows where this is heading. And he’s completely on board even if Taeyong is still 80% stranger.

“None of this floaty, bubbly Capitol food?”

“Absolutely not. You have my word.” And Sicheng holds him to it - clinks a tall glass of champagne and throws it back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand with a clean swipe, and follows Taeyong into the darkness of the streets - away from the bustling lights, Yuta and Yoonoh’s concern regarding his absence completely forgotten.

The night progresses wonderfully, full meats that Sicheng hasn’t had since the rustic forest roasting potlucks, amber alcohol that sloshes in his throat and a clattering of ravaged plates that litter their table. Sicheng hides his delighted smiles behind the curve of his mugs, and brushes his hand across the lacquered table, and everything’s going so well until Taeyong looks at him with broken eyes and at least 5 too many empty mugs teetering on the edge.

Taeyong’s hand flinches away, and Sicheng feels vulnerable, feels stupid. He’s suspended in the unfamiliar discomfort of rejection. Taeyong coughs, and finishes his drink, placing it down with an air of sombreness that seeps into the flickering light bulbs.

“I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to - I didn’t know -”

Taeyong makes a noise at the back of his throat, and his fingers wrap tighter around the handle of his mug, knuckles pale.

“It’s not your fault. I’m just not used to this -” Taeyong’s hands take a limp life of their own, and make vague gestures that punctuate the air more painfully than his words.

Sicheng is silent, the stillness made so much more piercing in the quiet lull of the restaurant around them, strangers going about their lives in the hustle and bustle of self absorption, failing to notice, to listen in on the intimacy of Taeyong’s posture, the pain breaking his eyes.

"I loved someone else, once," Taeyong mumbles, threading crooked fingers through his pink hair, suddenly looking older than his 23 years. Sicheng props up his head, eyes big with curiosity and a load of questions on his tongue.

"He was an activist. He'd never - " Taeyong laughs, a bitter one that forces its way out like a painful cough, a raspy scuffle full of heartache.

"Chittaphon was never typical. He wasn't from the Capitol, but he'd made his way here as an artiste, producing music, dancing, performing for the government propaganda. It took me so long just to get him to trust me, I'd - he'd believed that I was -"

Taeyong chokes, stumbling over his words and pressing a hard hand to his mouth, closing his eyes and breathing hard. Taeyong blinks, and Sicheng wants to reach out, wants to gather all the emotion and press it into their open hands.

"He'd gotten involved with some resistance members. They wanted to stage a coup, and he - he got caught up in the glory of it. I don't - I don't - Chittaphon - He - How could he have done that? A coup? How could he? How did he even think that he could?"

Taeyong's eyes are searching, pupils darting everywhere, bloodshot and filled with so much pain that Sicheng can't bear to look at him. The light bulbs still flicker overhead, and Sicheng is grateful they’re occupying a small booth near the back of the establishment, because the rawness of the emotion is too much to handle at once.

"He’s smart. He’s smart but - he'd - Chittaphon - he didn't make it. Clearly. Got hauled away smiling. I still don't - I still don't understand. Don't understand why he was willing - willing to give up just about everything. For a fantasy, an imaginary utopia? I don't - I just -"

Taeyong falls face first into his words, unfamiliar with the muscle in his mouth, teeth barricades to his will. 

Sicheng reaches over, pressing his palm against a shaking arm, "it's okay."

There's a pause, pregnant with unsaid assurances and age-old pain, led by the warmth of a comforting presence. Sicheng feels himself enveloping into it, folding himself over and over into the heavy quiet.

"Sometimes you just don't need to know everything, you know? It's good to not know things sometimes."

Taeyong laughs, a breathy sniffle following the high pitched giggle.

"You must think I'm overreacting. Your troubles outweigh anything I've faced."

"That's not true. That's - that's not true at all. Falling in love is just about as terrible as someone slicing open your back."

Taeyong looks up at him, eyes glimmering and cheeks pink, fingers curled tentatively around the arms enclosing him.

"And how would you know?"

Taeyong gets no response. Instead, Sicheng leans in, and presses a kiss to curving lips. Taeyong's eyes stay open, but Sicheng kisses earnest and shy. It consists of a little fumbling of tongues, it is inexperienced and it is positioned a little awkwardly, but it is clambering full of heartache hope and a thousand beginnings between lost souls, a pressure of lips promising Something New.

(sicheng doesn’t see this, but in the instant taeyong’s voice broke off, simultaneously ceasing to compel his attention and at once drawing in every ounce of it, the simple insincerity of taeyong’s pain rose like an uneasy effervescence. 

for a moment, it was as though the whole conversation had been a calculated trick of some sort to extract some form of emotion from sicheng. and sure enough, behind the wet glaze of his cheeks and the soft comfort of sicheng’s shoulder surrounding him, taeyong looks over with an absolute smirk on his beautiful face. and sicheng continues to hold him, kiss him, blind and sinking.

you see, the thing about gaining someone's trust is opening up, and poor, poor sicheng doesn’t know the full story.)


	2. six feet under, blind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some parts feel a bit disjointed, a bit rushed. i'll revisit this when i'm inspired again, but i'm satisfied w this version.

Taeyong is perfect, and beautiful, and Sicheng will never ask for more. He frowns.

"You shouldn't smoke."

Taeyong looks at him, his eyes flickering in casual disinterest, smoke billowing slightly from the drape of his shirt. Taeyong's fingers curl around the cylinder of the cigarette, dropping ashes into the night air. The orange embers set off the fiery reds of Taeyong’s hair - a new dye job that Sicheng only finds out about when he comes home and balks in the unfamiliarity.

"You shouldn't smoke,” Sicheng tries again, the unsaid discomfort rising in his chest.  
“It's bad for your health."

Taeyong takes a deep inhale, mocking in the way his lips pressed urgent to the cigarette, "obviously."

Taeyong takes another long drag, and Sicheng watches the way his eyes fluttered shut like release, like euphoria, as he inhaled death. A puff of smoke escapes with a breathy sigh, and Taeyong pins him with a look. And suddenly Taeyong feels like he was a word on the tip of Sicheng’s tongue that he never manages to roll out. It was uncomfortable.

"This isn't something for you to get your pants in a knot, Sicheng." And the way Taeyong spits his name, laced with condescension and the martyred expression of a grown up telling off a child, makes something in Sicheng shrivel up.

“Okay,” he whispers in response, and lets his eyes settle lazily on the argon and neon lights on hard right angles overpowering the subtle twinkles of the night sky. 

Taeyong looks over, silent, eyebrows creasing slightly before reaching out a slender arm, holding Sicheng loosely as the smoke wafts hazily into the air. It makes Sicheng cough, and Taeyong stares onward, skyward, unchanging.

Later, after Taeyong flicked his cigarette and kissed him soft, yawning as he pulled up the covers and dozed off into serene breathing, Sicheng sits alone at the balcony. The night sky looked so different just hours ago, and for a moment Sicheng craves a semblance of company and contemplates slipping into Yoonoh’s sheets for a warmth that Taeyong doesn’t seem to exude. But this isn’t fair to Yoonoh, or to Taeyong, and now Sicheng is just a selfish, selfish man who’s never content with anything he has and he hates it.

He buries his head in his hands - because this just isn’t how it is supposed to go, because this isn’t what it is supposed to be like. He drags his fingers over his face - pulling at his taut skin, sinking his fingernails into the hollows of his cheeks as his head remains resolutely between his knees. A genétle tap on his shoulder startles him, and Sicheng jerks his head up only to see the ripples of shock pass through the face of one of the servants, whose mouth is open slightly and eyes widened and startled. The servant bows hastily, hair flopping, as his hands gesture apologetically. Sicheng pats his shoulder awkwardly, unsure how to interact - he’s never seen the Avox, who usually work during the unsightly hours of early dawn or late night when there’s no disruption to the life of Victors.

Sicheng tries to nod reassuringly (oh it’s no problem, i’m okay!), but maybe his forehead is creasing unnaturally, or there’s a vacancy hanging pallid in his stare, but something off about him must have triggered a response from this stranger. Because the next morning he finds a book lying on the balcony table with a flower pressed in the middle of its pages like the memory of the Avox’s blooming eyes laced with sympathy. He spends the better part of the early hours of dawn peeling through the book, before he comes across a tiny, crude scrawl - not unlike a child’s handwriting - marking a dog-eared page, covered in a single name, over and over again. Taeil - written in all manners as if someone wasn’t even sure of his own name - and scared of forgetting. It’s terrible penmanship, but Sicheng finds himself scrawling back his name in the characters of his home - the ups and downs of his words foreign for a second before he remembers to dash the bottom of chéng with a neat stroke. 

“What’s that,” Taeyong murmurs as he rolls over, eyes heavy with sleep and hair sticking up in little tufts that contrast starkly against the white of the bed. Taeyong sits up, rubbing a hand across his cheeks imprinted by the pillows, and Sicheng smiles, tucking the book under his arm, and climbs back into the bed as the morning sun beats a pleasant warmth.

That night, he leaves a thank you note at the balcony table, and a book of his own. It is gone by the next morning, and Sicheng dreams of wordless, friendly Avox boys and sunshine-filled adventures alive only in the writings of a fictional book.

-

Yuta greets him with a kiss on both cheeks and hands gripping his shoulders in affection, for a moment almost as if he was checking that Sicheng was still tangible - still there. Regardless, it’s a surprise visit, and Sicheng stumbles at first, before hugging the man back just as hard. Yuta’s eyes flash around the room quick and sharp, before they land back on Sicheng, and curve into familiar crescents.

The air is peppered with pleasantries, latest gossip siphoned through the grapevine, and Yuta is ten notches louder than usual, white teeth flashing every millisecond, but Sicheng embraces the ostentatiousness with relish. Suddenly, Yuta quietens down, “is Taeyong here?”

At hi’s nod, the two fall silent, and Sicheng raises a brow, amused. Several seconds pass, before a subdued impassioned murmur is audible in the room beyond their parlor, and Yuta leans forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembles ever so slightly on the verge of coherence, before it sinks down and eventually ceases altogether when there’s a vivid click of the phone. Yuta leans back with a sense of contemplation hanging sallow on his face, eyebrows creasing slightly as he leans back with an almost practiced nonchalance.

Taeyong emerges from his office, a plush smile stretched over his lips and he mutters apologies about the disruption as his hands smooth over unseen creases in his white shirt. 

“Yuta!” Taeyong exclaims, his voice trailing with promise, breaking off into the silence as the smiling man looks at Yuta’s casual indifference of recline and Sicheng furrowed brows. “I didn’t know you were dropping by! Give Hansol my blessings, that poor soul. Tell me when he’s back, yes? Now, what would you like to eat?” Yuta smiles politely, declining, but Taeyong sweeps into the kitchen without waiting for a further answer.

Sicheng looks over, eyebrows high and eyes concerned. “What happened to Hansol?”

“Not why I’m here. Listen,” Yuta lowers his voice in the bustle of the dining room as servants mute their whispers with the heavy clangs of cutlery and sizzling meats, and Sicheng almost giggles at the absurd expression until he looks into the stone seriousness of the other’s eyes. The echo of Taeyong’s laugh sounds from the kitchen, and Yuta leans forward with greater urgency, as if in absence he was quickened by an unknown force of compellment.

“Listen - Taeyong - Taeyong isn’t everything you make him out to be.” And Yuta’s eyes are ignited by an intensity he’s never seen, no trace of a smile cracking onto his face, and its uncomfortable. 

“Why?”

“I - I can’t tell you. There’s eyes everywhere, and I’m already on the skin of my teeth telling you this. But trust me on this. Please.”

“Claret, love?” And the man in question pops a head out, eyes shining joyously as he handles a elegantly pink wine bottle.

“Oh, lovely.” Sicheng doesn’t falter.

Yuta sighs. “Just be careful,” he chides as he gathers their hands and peers over their entwined fingers, kissing the top of his head with a tenderness Sicheng hasn’t felt in a long while. Yuta leaves before the food is served, and they end up sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, with plates of scrumptious delectables between them, and two glasses of wine. There is an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, but Sicheng can’t help but feel miles away from the man he’s supposed to be loving.

“Are you alright?”

Sicheng nods with hesitant conviction, and hides the frown from his face when their butler comes back and murmurs something confidentially into Taeyong’s ear, whereupon Taeyong battered his lashes at Sicheng with a saccharine smile and apology, before pushing back his plate and his chair, whisking back into the study without a second glance. For a moment, Sicheng think of fickle trivialities - that maybe it’s another lover calling from a million miles away, and feels the stab of jealousy low in his stomach - before he thinks of Yuta’s unwavering seriousness, and feels something more nebulous, more discomforting creep up his spine. He imagines Yuta piercing him with a knowing look, and Sicheng stares down at the cold slab of lamb sitting bloodily on his plate, his eyes burning and his heart cracking.

Later that night, they fall into bed together again, Sicheng kissing harder and harder almost searching for something he’s hoping to find, Taeyong digging his nails into him until it makes him bleed, until it makes them both cry out in a semblance of humanity.

Afterwards, Taeyong twirls a cigarette over and over in his pale hands, and Sicheng feels the reignition, the stirrings of something unwelcome in his gut. He reminds himself that Taeyong is human, sometimes, and tries to superimpose the image of Taeyong with unsaid flaws and the Taeyong he once knew - untouchable and divine.

Taeyong presses the unlit cigarette to his lips in routine, and his eyes burn with indistinct coldness into their canopy ceiling, their bodies don’t touch, but Sicheng can feel the warmth radiating off the other man. He instinctively curls into Taeyong, presses himself against the expanse of a back, and sighs inaudibly into what was once his comfort. Taeyong doesn’t move, his eyes remaining unblinking and open. Sicheng doesn't doubt the fact that Taeyong barely sleeps, he sees the way the magnificent shoulders slump, the way fatigue swathes the body like a second skin. Sicheng untangles himself, rolling back over to his portion of their bed, blinking fast as he watches the orange daylight rise steadily onto the gaudy white canvas of the walls.

-

The phone rings, once, twice, before a staticky voice rumbles through the speaker, still heavy with the remnants of sleep, raw and scratchy in a throat, sandpaper in a mouth. Sicheng breathes heavily, trembling fingers grasping the phone, as his mind scrambles to gather his thoughts.

“Yuta?” There is a rustle of bedsheets, and a groan, short and scruff around the edges, before a response sounds out “yeah?”

“Can you - Are you free to - It’s uh, It’s me, Sicheng.” He coughs roughly, uncomfortable. He imagines Yuta blinking wearily, rubbing a calloused hand over his flopping hair and blinking sleep from his eyelids. He sucks in a breath, and shivers into the winter night as he presses his coat closer to himself. He’s in the middle of the town square, and the land feels so vast that for a moment the world hangs suspended as there exists just him - and Yuta a hundred miles away.

“I need to - I need to know.”

Yuta sighs, and there is a faint static that trickles over the line, before a loud beep sounds through - devastatingly loud that Sicheng yanks the receiver from his ear, hissing slightly as his eardrums ring with mechanical zaps. There’s another scuffle, and he’s mostly confused, before Yuta unmistakably clears his throat and Sicheng wants to yell at him.

“What the fuck, Yuta? What was that?”

“Sorry. I had to make sure the line wasn’t bugged. Only way I knew how was to get Hansol’s bug to override the system - but we’ll have about 2 minutes before they realise the line’s cut and static for too long.”

“Oh,” Sicheng says, dumbly. In this instant suddenly he doesn’t know what to ask - there’s so many unanswered questions floating around the crevices of his brain that he’s stumbling through priorities.

Yuta sighs, almost expectant in fondness, “Look. I’ll try and summarise the whole situation. So like - you and Jung like to flesh out secrets, get scoop on the Capitol from the inside and all that - and, and that’s your rebellion against the government. But for some of us, things are different, because we don’t have the immunity you get with becoming a Victor.”

Sicheng blinks in confusion.

“I mostly do small jobs on the side, mostly squirrelling information, architecture plans, floor layouts, you get the jist. But about a fortnight ago I got a call to do a job apparently requested by the boss himself - so I thought it was a normal kind of stylist consultation front where I extract information, right?”

Sicheng finds himself nodding along.

“But anyway I find myself at a warehouse in the outskirts of the 4th ring, I’m early for once because this is supposed to be a big job, and there’s a dead district official splayed out on the table. He was carved into, Sicheng. It was gruesome. And there’s a guy with a mask addressing a group of armed men and directing and giving orders. And then he turns to me and tells me that I’ve been assigned to Recon - which is like frontline work, for the next track and report mission. The thing is - and I swear, I’m sure that the guy in the mask was Taeyong. I can’t explain it - I can’t - but his eyes were unmistakable. I swear.”

“Impossible,” Sicheng scoffs. Yuta was being paranoid, but he still feels the prickle of discomfort rise in his throat as he entertains the potentialities.

“Look, I don’t know either, but thing’s just don’t feel right, okay? I don’t know what he’s capable of and - and I just want you to be safe, and be careful, because -”

Click. A slender finger is on the receiver, and Sicheng looks up through watering eyes at the man himself. Speak of the devil. Taeyong’s gaze is neither comforting, nor beautiful. Instead, it pierces through the stillness of the night air, before the gaze turns softer, sadder - a well perfected look that slides fluidly onto Taeyong’s face, and Sicheng feels his heart constrict slightly at the ease of the mask. He shivers but it is not because of the falling snow.

“What are you doing out here?” It’s an innocuous question, but the hardening bite of the words, the unsaid heaviness of the silence eat their way into Sicheng, who suddenly feels isolated in the vastness once again.

He shrugs, and if Taeyong is disappointed, it doesn’t show as Taeyong leans in, pressing soft kisses to his ear and lacing delicate fingers through his. Taeyong is dressed in pajamas that slide down at his collarbones, red hair glowing in the white backdrop of winter, every bit as ethereal and beautiful as Sicheng ever remembers with fond bitterness. Sicheng sighs, and lets himself be led back to their house, watching Taeyong’s footsteps disturb the snow beneath them and wondering why he never manages to say no.

“I was wondering where you went.” (strange to take a walk to the phonebooth, is unsaid, but lingers in the distance between them.)

Taeyong doesn’t mention this incident again, but his lips harden minisculely everytime Yuta drops by, and he ducks out of the room with a whispered excuse lingering in Sicheng’s ears and a convicted press of a palm against Sicheng’s back.

-

He’s still not sure why he’s here, but it has something to do with the phone call weeks ago. Taeyong holds his hand tight as they weave through the city, and they end up outside a tediously brown apartment complex. It is in the poorer areas of the Capitol, and the argon lights flicker at intervals, dull orange sparking the overcast sky.

Moonlight trickles in steadily from a crack on a nearby window, casting a barren apartment in a certain pearlescent glow. It splashes into the room, liquid metals, and breathes silver into several things; a table heaped with haphazard papers, a pile of bloodied clothes, and a sleeping man, sprawled languidly over a rickety bed. Taeyong and Sicheng stand framed at the door, their shadows casted in iridescent glow, and Taeyong turns to him for the shortest moment with a look of apology on his crystalline face.

In a watercoloured blur of movement, Taeyong straps the man into a chair, the elegant flicks of his wrist and the ease of the knots unnervingly similar to the times when they get particularly experimental in the bedroom. The man is handsome, and for a moment Sicheng sees something familiar in his face, almost as if he’s seen him before, seen him somewhere, before he blinks the confusion away.

Sicheng stares at the man, painted indifference clouding his eyes later when he watches Taeyong yank back his hair, shovel punches across this man’s broken face that resounds in the silence until everything siphons red. (you’re the rat, aren’t you? how much did you tell them? when did you start working for them? did you think you’d get away with this? the man screams through a bloody mouth, please please, no, no, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, i swear, i swear, please. and taeyong rears back his fist again. point blank, killshots.) Sicheng watches blankly, until Taeyong cocks his gun, and shoots. The sound cracks into the stagnant night, painful and abrupt and it happens so fast Sicheng claps his hands to his ears a second too late. 

There is a sharp intake of breath, a final desperate appeal to life, and the man's eyes flicker around the dimly lit room like he was taking in every sight before steadying hazily into an ominous end. After a while, the shaking stops, and Sicheng's vision stops swimming and his ears stop ringing. The man doubles over, red leaking steadily from the bullet lodged in his chest. His sweat slicked hair flopping to the front is animated but he is dead.

Sicheng turns to look at Taeyong, unstable and unsure. Taeyong smiles, pretty again, and shines the gun with the hem of his dress shirt. The action so casual and so mundane Sicheng is positive he has seen Taeyong reenact this exact action when preparing dinner.

"You've got something on your face," Taeyong moves close and Sicheng instinctively recoils before he sees the hurt flash across Taeyong's pupils. "Love, this is who I am." Disappointment, seeking sympathy, understanding colours Taeyong’s vivid eyes, but Sicheng doesn’t care, doesn’t wait as he barrels out of the apartment and tries to avoid the starkness of his memories.

Taeyong flicks the lighter, and they stand at the front steps of the building as the apartment burns into the sky, smoke billowing and unfurling like an enigma, and Sicheng envisions blueprints and documents laying haphazard on a desk crackling merrily, engulfed by the flames. It is a travesty of a cleanse, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and everything sizzles. After a while, there is no trace of a man ever there at all, and they walk through the streets as nothing more, and nothing less, than a young couple exploring the night, tucked away from prying eyes.

Sicheng looks at Taeyong, illuminated by the flickering lamps so unlike roaring fires, suddenly not sure anymore if anything is real. The drape of his coat mocks him, the faint outline of a gun shielded in the plush cashmere of his pocket, the blood on his hands muted in Sicheng’s entwined fingers in a display of affection that makes Sicheng feel sick to his stomach when he thinks of the man’s bleeding crimson.

Sicheng’s footsteps fall into familiar routine, but his mind grapples with the underlying knowledge that Taeyong is more than the man smiling at him, wondering if Taeyong is anything he even says he is. 

And as he looks over, Taeyong’s got a glimmer in his eyes, but knowing the man, it's probably just a reflection of those night lights in his plastic retinas. 

(just two days later, yoonoh calls sicheng with a brokenness in his voice that hangs heavy over the static of the headset. hansol’s been missing, yoonoh whispers. yuta’s inconsolable. the government says it was an electrical fault, but yuta’s - yoonoh gulps, and sicheng imagines his adam’s apple bobbing - hansol’s building was torched to ashes. it’s a freak accident but yuta’s convinced it was something else. they can’t find anything. he’s hysterical.

and sicheng has to bite his lip till it breaks and bleeds, stuffs his fist in his mouth to keep himself from screaming. yoonoh’s voice continues on, but sicheng can’t seem to hear the words. taeyong looks over from across the parlour, concern lining his face.)  
-

Sicheng knows.

Taeyong has his back to him, peering pointedly into the vanity mirror as he adjusts the tilt of his tie, pressing the linear of his collar with intentional disinterest. Taeyong looks crisp and intimidating, the white is blinding, and his eyes are sparkling with unsaid anticipation. He turns to face Sicheng, glancing at his wristwatch casually as he tucks a comma of fire red hair into the smooth of his forehead. Taeyong pierces him with a beautiful smile, eyes flickering impatiently.

“I’ll be back soon. I just need to run a quick meet with one of my inside informants. It’s happening tomorrow.”

Maybe Taeyong sees the look in his eyes. The haunting remnants of bloodshed and the weight of the world that rests on Sicheng’s shoulders, the second skin swathing his body at night, cocooning him in guilt and red splattered memories. Taeyong’s eyes burn with a familiar intensity as Sicheng turns away.

“It’s not your place to judge me. Don’t you see? I will spill their blood as they have spilled ours. I fight because I want to be closer to a world I envision, a world where we can live in peace. I won’t bow down any longer, Sicheng, I can’t. Not when we are so close. I’d sooner drown than surrender myself to bondage. I have to do this, I have nothing I won’t - ” and Taeyong’s voice breaks off with an authenticity he has never expressed. 

Sicheng bristles in the silence. To kill innocents off the sole basis of ignorance was wrong. He thinks of Taeil’s soft smiles, the quiet way he slipped Sicheng notes of encouragement and books with dog-eared pages with endearing shyness. He thinks of Minhyung’s shining vigour, the way his eyes glittered starrily when they talked about art, his face brightened with youthful innocence despite the oppression of a superficial life. He thinks of Yuta’s simple kindness, the stream of care and consideration showered his way, the gentle touches and comforting warmth. He thinks of Yoonoh’s broken understanding and awkward tenderness, the faltering clumsiness belying his actions, the appearance of a dimple in moments of unfiltered joy. Of Yukhei’s sombre knowledge and fellow pain, of his hopeful eyes and eager hands. So many other faces swarm his mind, some just faces in the crowd, until they all blur into watercolour as he blinks into blindness.

It is wrong. It is wrong. It is wrong and this is wrong and Taeyong is -

(how can you live like this? how could i love a man like you?)

"Don't you trust me?" Taeyong pleads, it comes out broken, just for a flicker of a moment, before the raw emotion reassembles itself into something more commonplace, and he blinks the slip of a mistake from his eyes. Taeyong’s mouth curves into familiarity, and the moment is lost as his irises turn plastic again. “Sicheng,” he tries, “come on, love - you know it too.”

The answer suddenly escapes Sicheng, and his eyes are wide open and yet he is blind, and Taeyong smiles at him with promise on pink lips and deceit on the tip of a tongue. It is still wrong, but yet -

Of course, he wants to say, because Taeyong's got the universe in his eyes and so much more that Sicheng would fall in love with over and over again. With distant memory, he thinks of all the things that they could have been, and how fucked up their reality looms, but then Taeyong laughs, brokenly, blooming pretty as peony, and Sicheng doesn't really want to think anymore. Taeyong squeezes his hand, and whispers something about them and something about the future, but Sicheng is too busy tracing the lines of Taeyong’s face, thumb brushing gently over the rosy cheeks to listen coherently. He sees disappointment flooding the faces of his mind, and he dismisses it with brazen care. How can a man live so burdened by passion, so misguided by justice? His heart ruptures, and he hates Taeyong with an burning intensity, and yet - he loves him so much that he never knew there was room in his heart, until it expands, fills up a sky, fills up a universe.

Don’t you trust me?

“I don’t know,” he whispers with listless emotion, the crease of his eyes slipping a tear, because he knows. He knows, he knows, he knows. Frustration and desperation trickle a familiar dance across his scalp. And Taeyong gathers him in his arms, breathing warm caresses and lovely kisses down Sicheng’s wet face, and they sway to a lilting melody of a song only heard by them, struck by a sense of bitter love they would not change for oscillation of the world, an unsaid promise for an encore of a dance the following night. It’s a promise Sicheng holds on to, as he watches Taeyong slip into the abyss of the night, the head of a rebellion doomed from the beginning. 

Sicheng watches as Taeyong turns back, just once, just - once - a laden glance over his shoulder, the languid stretch of a charismatic smile, and Sicheng imagines the soft laughter that tumbles from Taeyong’s lips as he waltzes in a pool of blood not his own.

Sicheng smiles, rain-smeared and sadness-sticky, because he knows.

-  
It has been three months since he’s last had company in their shared bed. Taeyong is nowhere to be found, and Sicheng strangely doesn’t feel as empty as he would have expected.

Sometimes he turns over, anticipating the warmth of a bicep or a curve of a neck to press a kiss to, but only stretches out to undisturbed sheets. Sometimes Taeil brings him a book that he loves so much that he bookmarks a page haphazardly, and he swears he hears a familar, soft tittering by his ear and he unfolds the crease with the cherry blush of shame. Sometimes Yuta comes bounding through the door, and Sicheng looks around instinctively, expecting to see a shadow of red hair sweep out of the room. Sometimes Yoonoh drops in with a new movie, or a new pack of fresh food, and Sicheng sets aside a third plate before he remembers to place it back into the cabinet, unused. Sometimes Minhyung tells him stories from school, and Sicheng finds himself about to relay it to an empty space.

(the house grows quieter, and maybe sicheng misses his company more than he’d like to believe. maybe he feels just as empty as he expected.)

It is only today, however, that the loneliness feels more than he could ever bear - because today he is Atlas, and he is crumbling under the weight of his bones and the wideness of the world. He’s standing in their parlour, body shaking violently as the shattered vase scatters itself around his bloodied feet like the petals of a crime scene when Yoonoh finds him. An irregularly proportioned envelope seal lies on the floor. Roses the bloodiest shade of deep crimson litter him, precariously left with thorns, ripped streams of a cream ribbon lining their fallen bodies, their putrid sickening scent souring the room. Sicheng is grasping at the crinkled remains of a letter, his fingers scrabbling at some semblance of comfort as his breaths fail to coincide with reality. The radio crackles on, static voices yelling into the terse quiet on how the White Palace has been overthrown from the inside, and the rest of the words blurred into unintelligible roaring of noises that beat into him from every angle.

There are many things Yoonoh has seen in his life. Yoonoh has constructed traps that mauled people apart as he watched overhead from foliage with barely suppressed excitement, he has manipulated and skipped around the daring dangers of death while the people around him mourned and collapsed into remnants of humanity. Yoonoh has rained down on himself with the intensity of a guilt none can express, broken himself down to rebuild the man he tries so hard to become. And still, the sight of Sicheng turning to him with broken eyes, with a pain so evidently rippling through his open face, strikes him dumb. He wants to reach forward, wants to collect Sicheng in his arms, but he fears the slightest touch would break the boy. There is a long stretch of silence, unbearable in implication, and so Yoonoh retreats with tender aching, the heaviness and poignant understanding of a moment becoming too much all of a sudden, and he sits on their steps swiping at the tears that Sicheng could not.

Sicheng crumples, and makes no noise as he falls into a wave that keeps pulling him under, the deep abyss of no escape. The image of Taeyong is seared into him, eating into him, burning up his insides until he feels just as lonely and empty as the man was. And in the quiet of what was once considered their home, Sicheng presses the stupid rose into the soft of his palm, so hard that it leaves the red of a blood, so soft that he wants to cry. He hates roses.

(“my dearest love”  
is how the letter begins. and he can’t bring himself to read the rest when everything was both so fake and so true at the same time - and yet he’s a fool that fell, fell in love regardless.

and sicheng kind of wants to laugh at the pain of it all. his feet bring him with prickled agony to the balcony, and he overlooks the hazy beginnings of a morning, imagining arms around him accompanying the watercolour imitation of crinkling eyes. because he is in love with a ghost of a memory, he was in love with an idea - his superimposed creation of an imaginary man, and the moon sets on their fading figures, a slow descent of something small and white and gibbous.)

-

Somewhere on the other side of the city, in the President’s mansion, a crystalline cerulean pool ripples with a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water. It would at all glances appear to be a seemingly normal - if pretentiously ornated and beautific - garden pool, if it weren’t for an elderly man in a tailored suit floating absently inside, as if a little lost. A small gust of wind vaguely corrugates the surface of the rippling water, only the most minute of disturbances after seeing the man splash in from the upper balcony with theatric splendour. Minutes earlier, a resounding crack of a broken spine and the heavy plosive of a gunshot accompanied the graceful arc of the body through the air, piercing the indigo air. Now, the rays of budding sunlight dance a final encore across the water, as a cluster of artificially enhanced leaves revolve the man slowly, tracing his body, like the dips of a seismograph, thin red frequencies crawling in the water. 

Another man stands at the remnants of a balcony, bloodied and scarred but alive - just barely. He flicks a lighter, and takes a long drag from his cigarette, hacking violently when the curl of his lungs ache into the open slash of his stomach as his arms cradle his falling intestines. 

He is a morbid picture, broken battered and open, but Taeyong smiles - just slightly. It all fell into place. His final words, his capture, his monumental revolution from within - playing together like the finishing touches on a toiling masterpiece. The history books would never forget him, they will sing of this day for decades - but in the quiet, Taeyong feels an absence that scratches at his failing chest. 

He can’t turn off what has driven him for so long, and feels something claw its way up, painfully, marks to kill. He handles the silver gun, cleaning it with resolute fondness on his reddened shirt, clicking it with relative ease. At least now the soaking blood on his shirt mirrored the anger of his hair. There was a certain comfort about killing.

He doesn’t think of Sicheng in his last moments, though his image did flash across his mind. But at the very least he constructed a legacy to be remembered by all, and a goodbye for someone who was once his lover that could be pressed into museums (oh he was such a romantic! they’d say). Taeyong smiles into the basking sun of victory, cigarette flicking disrespectful ashes onto the floating body of their once President, spiralling into the wind like poisonous leaflets. He takes another drag as his legs eventually crumble beneath him, and his red, red blood seeps into the pristine white marble. He takes one final inhale, before his heart beats ever slower, and he hears vague shouting resonating behind him, familiar voices screaming for his consciousness.

But the warmth is inviting, and there’s a brightness up ahead that makes Taeyong’s eyes close heavily as his lips curl into a familiar smile. 

 

(+1)

In the aftermath of the Rebellion, or perhaps the dawning of the New Age, Sicheng finds himself wandering into the town square, alone once again in the vastness. It’s been a while since he stepped foot into the district he once called home - for a great many months after the new Presidency, Sicheng’s been spending his time hopping couches to the open doors of his many contacts. He could never seem to bring himself to come back, not when everything felt like a raw wound, undulating to his touch. 

Today, he feels brave. The early hours of dawn illuminate the monument, but Sicheng stands to the side. He kicks at the gravel next to the phone booth, toes the crumbling rock as he thinks of what to say to a ghost of a man, wilting flowers clutched tight in his hand.

“I don’t think I ever knew him. Not properly.” 

He startles, instinctive reflexes kicking in for a moment as his elbow raises itself, before he blinks at Yoonoh’s face painted with shock, and he laughs at the absurdity. “I’m sorry. Caught me off guard for a moment.”

Yoonoh nods understandingly, “old habits.”

“How did you know I was here?”

Yoonoh shrugs, and there is a comfortable silence that stretches between them, as Sicheng alternates between staring at the phone booth, and at the drooping cherry blossoms in his hands, feeling the pinpricks of Yoonoh’s gaze on him.

“I don’t think I knew him very well either.” Sicheng continues, looking up, and there is a bittersweet tang to his smile, and he bites his tongue. “It doesn’t bother me anymore, honestly. Some people just aren’t meant to be known, right?” Sicheng turns away, but there are no tears shed.

As he stands in front of the monument, cherry blossoms perched precariously in the spaces he could find, Sicheng feels a wave of peace pass over him. He hasn’t felt that way for a long time, and it is pleasant. It feels like closure. The cool of the morning presses dew into his sweater, and the rounded press of a chin becomes a comfortable weight on his shoulder. Sicheng doesn’t need to turn around to know that Yoonoh’s got him enveloped in his arms, exuding a warmth that makes him feel at home. 

For the slightest flicker in time, or perhaps a trick of the pouring sunlight, Sicheng sees a pink-haired man sitting cross legged by some articulately curated bushes. The unbounded fertility of the green leaves setting a stark background to a mop of softest pastel hair, a little fuzzy around the edges. The image of the man smiles, waves, maybe even calls his name in the familiarity - before Sicheng blinks, and then the man is gone.

Yoonoh’s face peers into his peripheral vision, eyes alight with concern before the dimples reappear when Sicheng shoots him a soft smile, and traces the fingers that curl around his stomach. They turn to walk away, and the cherry blossoms left behind bloom with unsaturated vitality under the early rays of the sunlight, the pristine cold of whitest marble.

The sky lightens, starry white pinpricks encompassed within the dark cloth of night being pulled away slow, slow. Careful. The hand of God casts the sky into a pale imitation of watercolour, not unlike the faded hair dye of a revolution, plucking the stars out of the sky one by one, and eventually - the stars of Taeyong's eyes.

 

(a moment that sicheng had never got to see, deep in the recesses of a dead man’s shut eyelids, 6 feet deep, a stillness in time not forgotten - but rather never understood.

taeyong was once a beautiful victor too. the youngest to ever win his games, standing over dead teenagers in his untouchable glory, dazzling smile on his face as he clutched a solid gold throwing knife, dozens other strapped neatly to his chest.

the golden boy of the capitol, the crowds used to scream. the most popular victor there ever was - with his frosty white hair, picturesque face, charming mannerisms and smooth cadence. of course, that was when he was just taeyong, and nothing else. the beautiful plaything of the people, thrust around like a wellworn toy, passed along until he was broken and bleeding from the inside. he played it perfectly, for the most part, until the golden boy cracks under the pressure, to peel away the splendour to reveal the mess he was.

he shouts at a client, gets angry, he fucks up, so he apologises and cries his heart out, as pleas on knees gone unattended, and he returns to his home to find his family lying in a perfect row with bullet holes trickling a steady stream of garish red from their foreheads. and so he acts out, thrashes and kicks and screams and refuses and he only stills when they haul his lover to the public square, an innocent, a simple tailor with curving smiles and cheeky eyes, and he watches as chittaphon is hacked to bloody pulp, to pieces in front of him, eyeballs bulging as the man is dried out like game in hunting season. 

and so taeyong breaks down, lets his mind quieten itself to try and ignore the roaring screams and waves of guilt that blind his vision. he sees his younger sisters with their open eyes, and chittaphon hacking out red roses, drowning him in his regret. so he builds himself fantasies out of fallacies, castles out of cardboard, and tears into his mind with the ferocity of the very society that made him. his mind becomes so blind, so numb to the brutality, that eventually the only emotion that keeps his blood pumping is hatred. he slips into the shadows - and as the years pass, the citizens forget he was ever their golden boy, and move on like waves into the tumultuous future of younger, prettier, shinier victors. but taeyong never forgets.

he is a monster of their own creation, and he smiles at the irony of it all as the rebellion bursts through the doors of the mansion, and running at the front of it all, he cocks his gun, and takes aim like they had done so many years before.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was thinking of writing a jaewin oneshot sequel to accompany this universe?? because i love the dynamic between the 2 as kindred spirits??? also sorry jae didn't turn up as much here lmao he's not really a resistance member? asdfghfgh tell me if you would read a jaewin sequel to this heh it’ll probably be a more organic friendship interdependence to love situation compared to this taewin infatuation/disillusionment arc

**Author's Note:**

> this would be my first fic in about 4 years, and is one of my first published kpop fics. i love sicheng with my life - particularly when paired with taeyong even though we've been terribly starved of their interactions lately. please comment and kudos! i really really appreciate any critique or TYPO point-outs or just opinions on this!


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